


A Little Lost

by SrebrnaFH



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF John Watson, Captain John Watson, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First meeting much earlier, Hurt John Watson, John actually likes Mycroft, John is Smarter than he looks, Kid John Watson, Kid Sherlock, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Mycroft Being a Good Friend, Mycroft just needs a hug, PTSD, Protective Mycroft, Protective Sherlock, Separation, Sherlock is more stable, Speech impediment, Stress, Teen Mycroft, Trauma, Tutoring, precocious Sherlock, soldier John
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-06-14 15:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15392208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: When Lestrade calls Sherlock in to a scene of a crime and the scene transforms into a hostage situation, he doesn't expect his resident self-proclaimed sociopath to talk the attacker down.





	1. Sherlock

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a one-shot. New chapters will now be added whenever I feel like it. No set posting schedule.
> 
> Note (2019-05-11): this will be continued, I just got a little stuck. The timeline is undergoing revision and I'm checking the already posted parts for consistency, because I might have written myself into a plothole in one place. Once it's done and I post a new chapter, I will detail which parts underwent a significant change.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is called to a crime scene and surprises everyone by getting involved in a weird kind of a hostage situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a glimpse of an idea one evening, kept writing the next morning and… this. Perfect 2k words, no idea what to do with it now. Will probably park it until I finish all that other stuff that I’m *supposed* to be writing.
> 
> Warning: This scene was written quickly and without much correction. I will pick it up again, soon, and will correct the language and the style. The content will stay the same.

Lestrade seemed worried, actually properly worried, so he paid the cabbie quickly and followed the DI towards the tense crowd.

“We had several victims, minor crimes, over the last weeks. Common pattern, each accosted when passing through one of the small passages, in places where there is a crowd during the day, but in the evenings…”

“Fools” he shook his head. “Obvious place for an ambush.”

“Indeed. It didn’t filter up to us, until this week.”

“It escalated.”

“He took out two homeless women, coming back from the market. They resisted, apparently, at least based on what their hands looked like.”

He grimaced.

“And nobody started looking for him then?”

Lestrade pursed his lips.

“Someone decided that two homeless… women aren’t interesting enough to bump it to homicide. They wrote them off as accidents.”

“Dear God, what kind of idiot…”

“Yes, yes. They are now in the morgue and doctor Hooper is finishing with one of them. Obvious defensive wounds  _and_  one of them had a bunch of keys between her fingers.”

“Women’s cheapest weapon” Sherlock nodded. “What’s the current problem then?”

They were on the edge of the crowd now and Lestrade shook his head.

“It escalated again. The man attacked again, but this time the prey turned out to be clawed. The thing is, he jumped a guy who beat him almost to death with his cane but, when my officers arrived, declared he is not handing him over because he doesn’t believe they are actual police. Then he started spewing some paranoic visions about everyone being against him, or trying to get him back to the hospital…”

“What’s the issue? Can’t you take one limping guy down?”

Lestrade grimaced as if he had bitten a lemon.

“He’s armed.”

They pushed their way to the tape and surveyed the scene. To the left, the police officers. To the right, a man’s crumpled body under the crumbling wall. In the middle, his back to them, a mid-sized, thin as a rail man with a cloud of dirty blonde hair, keeping the detectives and the police in his sight, aiming his Sig at them, or, more specifically, at Sally Donovan, standing in front of her coworkers, her hands in the air, talking to him in a measured, calming tone.

The guy was watching her, but he obviously also scanned the nearest area, as the moment Lestrade and Sherlock arrived at the tape, his posture stiffened.

Donovan moved.

The man moved the aim of his Sig accordingly.

“Please, put the gun down. I’m Sergeant Donovan, New Scotland Yard. I want to check on the man you were fighting with…”

“No” Sherlock heard the man’s determined voice. “You are not. You are lying. You will take him, patch him up and let him out again.”

“We will not be letting him out again, not without a court order to do so” she said softly. “Please, let us check his status.”

“Alive, will stay so for foreseeable future” the man shrugged. “I knew where to hit. I can even name the specific bloody bones I broke.”

Lestrade winced.

Sherlock raised the tape and stepped forward.

“Sherlock” he heard hissing. “You… you idiot!”

The man noticed, but apparently chose to keep Sally in his sights. Still, he turned sideways, preparing for Sherlock’s attack.

“You hadn’t been sleeping, John, have you?” he said as calmly as he could muster. “You always reacted badly to lack of sleep.”

The man stiffened.

“You were always complaining. Turn off the lamp, you wanker. Stop making that bloody noise, you git. How can you stay alive on three hours of sleep, are you an alien?”

The shoulders shook. Just a bit.

“How long have you been in London, John? I’d wager no more than three months. Your hair always grew back quickly, so I’d say it has been four months since your last buzz cut. You are still tanned. You hadn’t been picking up your pension, you’ve been living rough, yet you still have your uniform boots. I hope you have stored the uniform somewhere and it didn’t get stolen.”

“What the fuck are you doing, freak?” Donovan hissed as he took another step.

“Talking a combat veteran out of shooting some of the London’s finest. I admit, he is also undernourished, at the moment hypoglycemic and…” he took another step, putting him no more than a foot away from the man. “…feverish. Seriously feverish. Now, John, do you see this lovely lady?”

The shorter man nodded quickly.

“This lady is a sergeant with the New Scotland Yard.”

“No, she is not… They want me, they want to take me back to that hospital. I can’t go back there! It is like torture…!”

“Shh… She is a sergeant, John” he took the last step. “I’ve been working with her for the last year and a half. Now, can I take your Sig and give it to the nice lady?”

“Sherlock?”

He saw the shoulders sagging and the tremor slowly going up and down the left arm.

“John.”

“You are here?”

“Obviously.”

“But I… I thought… I thought I saw you yesterday. And the day before. And last week. I saw you on the street.”

“John, you actually probably did” he said calmly, his hand tracing the length of John’s right arm, down to the Sig. He surrounded it with his bigger palm and slowly, slowly, directed it to the ground. “The man tried to rob you? You reacted and overdid it a bit?”

John’s eyes, confused and blue, looking over his shoulder.

“You beat him up with your cane?”

“Yes” came a breathless confirmation.

“He saw a harmless older man with a cane and got Captain John Watson instead, fancy that” he pried the Sig’s handle out of John’s fingers

There wasn’t even a shadow of a ghost of a smile there. John Watson wasn’t there. Or at least, not a whole John Watson. But, hopefully, enough of John Watson to build from there.

“They’d put me in a hospital” John said quietly, flexing his free left hand. “They… They said they had fixed me. As much as they could, but… They said I couldn’t leave yet. That I wasn’t fit to be outside. That…” he swallowed convulsively, turning his head away as Donovan took another step towards them.

“Here you go, Sergeant” Sherlock dropped the weapon to the evidence bag she held in outstretched hands. She quickly closed the bag and passed it to someone standing behind her. She pulled something out and he only saw the metallic glint of the handcuffs when she put her hand on John’s shoulder.

The flurry of movements was impressive and he said so, pulling John away from where Sally was trying to stand up.

“I think it will be better if you leave him to me, Sergeant” he said coldly, watching her being helped up by a uniformed officer. “And try to keep your handcuffs away from us, please. John isn’t…”

“Oh, come on, really? You will now claim you can talk this guy into surrendering?”

“For one, you definitely can’t do it” he pointed out calmly, his eyes trained on John’s. “Secondly, I won’t be talking him into surrendering. He did nothing wrong, except for defending himself. The thief made an error of trying to rob someone walking with a cane and he got what he deserved for it. Third, John requires medical attention and he will receive it as soon as I can get him home. If I let him go with you idiots, you would have done something idiotic like asking him for his name or making him show you an ID. And that would have ended badly.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Sherlock?” Lestrade was on his other side, ordering the ambulance personel to pick up the unconscious thief. “Why are you even…”

He took a step towards them and John immediately stiffened, his hands coming up in a defensive stance.

“John, this is Detective Inspector Lestrade. I’ve been helping him on some cases when you were away. Now, do you think you feel well enough to get into a cab, or will we have to walk?”

He saw a full-body shudder going through the soldier’s stature.

“Walk it is. Lestrade, if you have any questions, you can follow us, but stay in sight. I won’t be responsible for anything that happens if you try to walk behind us. We won’t be very quick anyway.”

There was a slight relaxation now in John’s shoulders, his head cocked to the right, lids slightly fluttering, heavy and closing.

 _Fuck_.

“Lestrade, you have…” he focused. “A candy bar. In your left pocket. It would be good if you could hand it over now.”

“Wh…” the man shook his head. “Fine. Fine.”

A slightly softened Mars bar appeared and Sherlock peeled off the wrapper quickly, breaking off a bit from the end.

“John? You know what is wrong, don’t you? You’ve been not eating properly” he heard Lestrade snicker behind his back, but his focus was on the man in front of him. “John?” the blonde lashes fluttered open and the soldier swayed, leaning on him. “Here. Chew carefully, swallow. Soft. I know you don’t like Mars, but at this point any sugar is better than none, right?”

“Sugar and fat” he saw John trying to reach up, but his hands were shaking too much. “Fuck.”

He turned, shielding them from any onlookers with his coat and brought the piece up to John’s lips in his fingers.

“Sherlock” he heard Lestrade’s tense voice “if you want to keep this thing  _somewhat_  legal, I have to accompany you anyway, but if we don’t move, it will become much harder. Cavalry arriving and all that rot.”

Indeed, there were more annoying officers being unloaded from the cars. He pushed the piece of candy to John’s lips and kept it there as long as it took the soldier to react. He broke off another bit.

“Come on, John. You have to be at least vertical for this. Or…”

A sleek black car quietly pulled up at his left and a door opened.

“He won’t get in, Mycroft” he said, not turning his head.

“We don’t have much choice” his brother stepped out and handed him a bottle of orange juice. “This will be better than chocolate and easier for John.”

He felt John straightening in his hold.

“Mike?”

Mycroft hated being called “Mike”. He hated it when his parents said it, when his classmates shouted it in derision, even when Sherlock himself used it. For some inexplicable reason the one person who was allowed to call him that was John.

“Mycroft, he…”

“They didn’t allow me to call you” John said suddenly. “I told them I needed to call Harry, but they said she was not available. I asked them to call Sherlock, to tell him I’m back, but they said he was not family. I…”

“I know” Mycroft’s voice was terse with unleashed anger. “We’ll deal with them. Drink the juice now, John. It will help.”

He helped John to open the bottle and held it to his lips for a small first sip.

“They said…” John sighed. “They said I have nobody who would want me back.”

He felt the same anger simmering in him.

“Mycroft?”

“Someone had a bright idea to use some of the vets in a off-the-record PTSD study” Mycroft moved to John’s other side and cautiously laid a hand on the soldier’s shoulder. “Drink up, John. We’ll put you up in my house for the time being, let Sherlock clean up the pigsty he calls flat, first.”

“Does he still” John swallowed another gulp. “Keep mold cul…”

The bottle slipped from his hand and his body slumped slightly to the side, where Mycroft was standing, already prepared to catch him.

“Into the car” he ordered sharply. “We have to get him home before he wakes. Detective Inspector, if you could come with us, I’d be grateful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me if this seems worth picking up.
> 
> Edit: OK, comments say "more", there will be more. I just need to finish the other stuff I'm posting (I'm not up to posting THREE Sherlock stories at the same time, no way)  
> Thank you all for the feedback ;*
> 
> Yep, definitely WILL BE CONTINUED. Simply after I'm done with the other stuff I have in progress right now (you can check it out too, two Sherlock stories and one Pride and Prejudice, and two others that are waiting for proper epilogues...)  
> Thank you all for kind comments ;)


	2. Greg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ride home. And some explanations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh. My. God.  
> I just wrote that first chapter, like, to get the scene out of my mind (because I know that if I don't write it, it won't stop nagging me). And then you all commented, clicked, bookmarked and subscribed.  
> I LOVE YOU ALL.  
> If I feel down I read comments under my stories and this praise fest going on here is like a double dose of mood improvement medicine.
> 
> Now, an honest warning: I have only a very very vague idea where this is going. VERY vague. This will stay a WIP for like, ages. Because... Yeah. I see a lot of flashbacks, a lot of digressions where the characters are talking, some Mummy Holmes and maybe some Harry narration. I have really no idea.  
> Let me know what you think about it, both about the style and the language (I'm not a native speaker, so my English sometimes fails in weird ways) and about the direction the story is taking.  
> I won't say I will be taking requests to include specific stuff, but if I see that people want to read about certain stuff (eg. John's first rugby match, Mycroft's first day at school, or... whatever) I will probably be inspired and add a scene or two. Can't promise it will always happen, because my muse comes and goes.  
> Also, this will stay T-ish, without any specific gory descriptions and without smut. Sorry, but my style supports up to "hot fluff" ;) Also, most probably, very slow burn. Because we'll be bouncing to the past and back to present again A LOT.  
> Also, I tend to flood my stories with unnecessary, random, everyday details, so if I include a scene of baking or something equally nonsensical... Sorry. Cookies won't play a major role in the story, but my boys love their sweets, so... ;)

The ride was smooth and silent, letting Greg watch the scene on the seat opposite in peace. It was a rare thing to see Sherlock Holmes so focused on a _living_ person, and yet, here he was, holding the weird homeless guy up, with the blonde head pillowed on his shoulder.

"The hair clipper is in the cabinet under the sink" the older Holmes remarked, quite out of the blue and Greg frowned, trying to make sense of that statement. The next thing he saw, however, was Sherlock touching the dirty-blonde strands cautiously and blinking furiously.

"I hope you wait until the poor guy is awake" he raised an eyebrow at the brothers. "You wouldn't want to just shave a bloke without his consent, would you?"

"John was always very particular about his looks" Mycroft sighed and turned a bit in his seat. " _This_ is not the way we would have voluntarily showed outside."

He felt a bit of a pressure raising behind his eyes.

"OK, enough. I understand that the two of you know this guy. Can you please explain how he did... what he did to Donovan? Sally is the champion in the ring, she will ask how a small guy like this managed to slam her flat to the ground."

"This is the difference between, let's say, exercise and real life" Mycroft Holmes smiled thinly. "Or between a sportswoman - very good one - and a killer. Gregory Lestrade, please meet Captain John Watson, MD."

" _MD_? Hey, I understand your brother sometimes behaves like I'm daft, but don't try to tell me that this bloke is a doctor."

Sherlock frowned and drew his coat protectively over the sleeping man, but stayed silent, letting his brother take this one, apparently.

"Well, in fact, this is the way an invalided army doctor may look like" the older Holmes' voice seemed laced with something akin to sadness. "We used to joke that Watson knows exactly where to kick a guy to take him down with maximum pain and minimum damage."

"He said something at the scene" Greg pressed his nose with his thumb. "That he knows exactly which bones he broke."

"That sounds like John, precisely. We..." Mycroft Holmes held a breath for a moment. "We used to hang out, after a fashion. He borrowed my textbooks, ones his parents couldn't afford. I'm three years older, so I could happily lend him what he needed, and our parents saw it as some kind of volunteering, I think. I tutored him after he broke his hand and couldn't take his own notes and then it turned out he had... affinity for sciences. He used to sit in the library all the time, but the offering in our local was meagre, so I invited him to partake in my collection."

"So you guys know each other since what, primary school?" Greg raised an eyebrow. "I thought you two were, well, very... public school, you know."

"Our parents thought it would be good for us to gain social experience in a more relaxed environment" the older man smirked and nodded slowly. "It had its merits. None more important than meeting John."

"Mike, do you have some juice that is _not_ laced with drugs?"

A blue eye, sharp and conscious. A blunt-fingered hand, reaching to pat Sherlock's knee.

"Lemme go, you thin git. I feel all your bones pressing into my back."

The man sat up a bit and moaned, rubbing his temples.

"How long?"

"Ten minutes... you didn't drink enough" Mycroft handed him a bottle of water.

"No, I mean, how long have I been crazy this time? I must have measured the dose badly..."

Sherlock caught the blonde's head in his hands and turned to face him.

"John, what is the date?"

"Twenty-sixth of October. Or twenty-seventh, not sure. I always use a date that I know is in the past..."

"Twenty-fifth, actually" Greg can't help himself. "Doctor Watson? Or Captain Watson?"

The guy flinched.

"Doctor, I suppose. That much I have papers for. Somewhere."

"Ah" Sherlock smirked. "You are still..."

"John, you shouldn't be self-diagnosing" his older brother cut him off. "What if you guessed wrong?"

"I never bloody guess" the man snapped. "I _know_. You taught me as much, Mike. Yes, I know, bloody irresponsible. But I know how deep I go without the meds, and no, I'm not willing to risk it anymore."

"John, what _exactly_ do you remember? Where were you since..." the brothers exchanged glances.

"Oh, they are good, aren't they?" John smirked at Greg. "Half of the conversation just going without us taking part in it. Hello. John Watson. Various ranks and titles, call me John."

"Greg Lestrade, DI."

"Sherlock was..." John winced. "Ah, he was talking about you, out there... were you there? I'm sorry, when I'm in a daze, I tend to focus overly on single persons and with Sherlock it was easy to forget my surroundings."

"A daze?" Sherlock helped John to open the bottle and they waited as the soldier drank.

"I..." he sighed. "I think they are some kind of panic attacks, followed by a psychotic state that is only resolved by either adequate medication or several hours of sleep. I must have miscalculated and that guy came at me unexpectedly, so..." he sighed. "Must have used up whatever was in my system and the new dose didn't kick in... fuck. Lost my bag, didn't I?"

"I will ask my officers to look for it, but if it was what the bloke was trying to steal..."

"Yeah, yeah. Evidence. I know. He was, in fact. I bought a half year supply of the antipsychotic that works best, and I had my..." he closed his eyes and sighed. "Bloody hell. My prescription pad."

Mycroft Holmes grimaced.

"No use keeping your name out of it then. But it would be good to, at least temporarily, suppress John's details" he sent a longer look towards Greg. "Considering what I discovered..."

"We've arrived, Mr Holmes."

"Ah. Let's continue this inside. Detective Inspector, please come with us _in your official capacity_."

John sighed and stretched his legs.

"OK, why does a DI have to come with us, in any capacity at all? No offence, mate, but I'm just curious."

"For one, as long as he is with us, you are, in some manner of speaking, in police custody" Sherlock smiled at Greg thinly. "Although I'm quite sure I'm not letting you go into _actual_ police custody."

They slowly left the car, Sherlock supporting John all the time and they followed Mycroft to the main door. The elder Holmes already had a mobile pressed to his ear and was issuing orders, but by the time they reached the entrance to the flat he seemed to be done and was unwinding the scarf from his neck.

"Sherlock, please secure the door. Anthea will bring a doctor in half an hour, but she has the code. Turn the noise cancelling on and make sure the blinds are drawn properly."

"Wh...?" John looked around with wild eyes, but Greg just nodded at him.

"All secure" the younger Holmes replied tersely and the atmosphere in the narrow corridor relaxed significantly.

"John, upstairs, several guest rooms are available, just the first to the left is, well, taken. Now, I'm quite sure nothing of mine will fit, but I can offer at least a fresh set of pyjamas, if you would like to take a shower and change..."

"Mike, Mike" John's voice flutters with a bit of laughter. "Just tell me that I smell like a guy who lived rough for a few weeks. I don't need you to walk around me in circles. Yes, thank you, I will take a shower _gladly_. And if you have a hair clipper, I will be more than happy to get rid of _this_ " he pulled on his hair. Upstairs, first to the left taken, all others free. Correct?"

Mycroft smiled finally.

"Yes. And dump whatever you wish to salvage in the laundry bag. Oh, and tell me where to find your uniform and any documents you have hidden. It's better if one of my people fetches it."

John smiled right back, looking up at the taller man with merriment in his eyes.

"Very well. My bag is in a longterm storage..."

 

#

 

As the soldier showered upstairs, the three sat around the kitchen table, Holmeses watching each other intently.

"OK, you two. What the hell is going on here?"

Sherlock broke first.

"John was shot half a year ago" he bit each word off angrily. "They reported him... They reported him MIA."

"Shit."

"What I'm guessing is that another unit picked him up and for some reason didn't report it. They had him hospitalised and then sent back to England, but..."

"But again, nobody reported it to his commander. They treated him and then transferred him as a research subject to some facility specialising in PTSD."

"And they didn't update his family? That Harry he was speaking of - his brother? They didn't let him call anyone - like you? You are not family, but hell, some of these vets don't have any kind of family and they are let go when they get better..."

"I made a _fascinating_ subject" John's voice was laced with sarcasm. He entered the kitchen and sat on one of the massive chairs with a groan. "The fact that at the primary assessment I had been deemed perfectly stable and healthy and then broke down on the following ones made me _interesting_. For the good of the country, apparently, it makes sense to annoy stressed veterans until they threaten their tormentors with bodily harm and then claim said veterans are unstable. Then you take a whole group of these, put them in one dormitory and watch their contrasting psychoses clash. I'm not sure what it was that they wanted to gain, but I can tell you, putting a guy who talks in his sleep in one room with three guys with auditory oversensitivity... Bad idea. Very bad idea."

"So they... what? Wanted you to drive each other mad?"

"After a while, I wasn't sure. I _think_ they were tracking the results of prolonged exposure to stressful stimuli" he towelled his now almost white blonde hair dry and shook his head. "I look like a fucking dandelion, don't I?"

Sherlock snorted and then laughed. Properly, full-voice laughed.

"Yes, John, you look like a representative of the aforementioned flora. Not sure about the carnal part of the statement. Sherlock, fetch the clippers and a sheet."

Greg had rarely seen the younger Holmes do something _that_ quickly when ordered.

Mycroft busied himself at the kitchen counter, pulling out four mugs and a teapot, a box of cookies - "Mummy's cookies, John, the lemon ones" - and a jar of honey from the "special" shelf.

"Mike, I think I love you" John smiled up at their host. "What would you say if I proposed?"

"That my brother knows too many ways of making me suffer, I'm not risking it, you silly boy."

"I could, for example, start with defacing one of your beloved movie posters" Sherlock growled from the door, where he stood with the clippers and a large piece of fabric. "Come on, John. Let's get rid of the dandelion."

As he watched the brothers move about, Sherlock giving their friend a buzzcut, Mycroft pouring water into the pot, Sherlock mopping up the loose hair, Mycroft handing everyone their mugs... he felt maybe a little left out of the tiny circle. Of course, if John had been part of their lives all these years ago, and had been somehow lost in action and treated like some lab animal, it was natural for them to focus on him, but...

The train of thought was cut off by a sudden movement of the seat and a warm body joining him on the sofa.

Mycroft's forehead leaning on his shoulder was a sign of utter wretchedness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I hope you're not disappointed with how this goes.


	3. Mycroft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Change of perspective and a bit of warm fluff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have no idea where this is going to end, but it's sure fun to write them.

John seemed more like himself with every minute, and when he started to _flirt_ , Mycroft finally felt like he was allowed to relax. Gregory, sitting on the sofa, watching them, looked a bit forlorn, but made for a perfect safe haven, so, having loosened his tie and shed the waistcoat, Mycroft joined him on the seat and leaned into the warmth, closing his eyes, just for a moment.

He was so tired, so terribly tired.

Of course, having John back - from the dead, almost - was incredible, bordering on miraculous. It was the fashion in which they had recovered him, the randomness of that event, that sent cold shivers along his body.

Gregory's heavy, dependable arm sneaked around his waist and pulled him flush to his side.

"Now, love" he heard and felt the slight rumble. "You can rest, can't you?"

He wanted to nod, but that would have been a lie.

"Will the country survive until tomorrow without you?"

"Probably" he mumbled, quite unsure of his answer. Would it?

"Will there be a war, or a crisis, if you don't go back to the office?"

"That can't start a war without me" his lips curved a bit. "Anthea will call me if someone challenges us to a duel by nukes."

"You see? You can stay home. Rest your eyes, just for a bit. You've put everything in motion, now you can take a nap."

He felt himself being repositioned and divested of his tie.

"Gre-gory" he mumbled slowly, still resisting the sweet pull of darkness.

"Sleep. Sherlock, turn the lights down and go upstairs, help John settle in his room and then make sure the doctor sees him."

It was a good thing that the sofa had that deep, wide seat, as two grown men wouldn't have had a chance of staying safely on anything even a finger-width narrower.

The calming, warm, soft support under his back moved and pulled him up. A small huff of air mussed his hair.

He sank back and down and away, mind drifting.

Somewhere in the distance he heard the door opening and closing, his brother's voice and Anthea's soft alto. Steps. Closer, away and up.

Blink.

He was lying on his side, covered with a blanket, and Gregory was pulling off his shoes.

Blink.

The room was dark and quiet and there was someone walking down the corridor.

Blink.

A pair of really strong arms heaved him up.

"You are a bloody long git, Holmes" a slightly huffy voice said. "More bone than meat, definitely, but the _size_ itself..."

Blink.

His own bed and he is stripped to pants and vest.

Blink.

 

#

 

The morning dawned obnoxiously clean and bright. A heavy weight at his waist signalled Gregory's presence, which was good. Other voices somewhere down the hall signalled guests, which was _not_ that good.

Guests.

Sherlock's voice floated down to the room.

And John's weak laughter.

_John._

Probably the first person at school who had ever looked at him and saw a human being instead of a bag of money on legs.

Probably the first person in their life that had ever looked at Sherlock and saw a sensitive ten-year-old who covered his softness with brashness and not a little dangerous weirdo.

The first person the brothers almost came to blows over.

John was alive and was now in the kitchen with Sherlock.

John was alive and ill and Sherlock was making him breakfast, and that boy never ate properly.

Maybe, if he set the situation appropriately, he could have Sherlock eating regular meals, at least for John's sake.

"If we manipulate it correctly, we guilt your brother into eating more" Gregory murmured, stretching. "Sleep now, My. Anthea will call if someone attacks our borders."

"But I need to go to the office...!" he protested feebly.

"It's _six_. You have at least an hour more. Sleep."

"Gregory! There may be documents waiting for me, a report, what happened to John...!"

The man behind him stiffened.

"Shit" he murmured. "Right. Mycroft, what _do_ we do about him?"

"He stays here, with Sherlock. Gregory, I'm not even sure at the moment he is officially alive, but if you book him and his name shows up in the system, they - whoever they are - will know where he is. Even if we put the best surveillance in place, we can't guarantee someone won't be trying to... expedite certain things."

"You assume they would try to off him in the cells?"

"Wouldn't you?"

"Assume or try to off him?"

"Any. Both."

"I would assume that if I were a criminal then yes, I'd most certainly try to silence him as soon as I had a chance."

"And if you were a criminal with access to military resources?"

"Then I'd do it efficiently and quickly. Bugger."

"Exactly."

Gregory's form relaxed slightly and curled up behind him.

"I will tell Sally" his favourite detective inspector sighed. "But I'll talk to John and Sherlock first and see what the doctor pronounced. If I can honestly tell her that John can't be put in a cell due to a medical condition, it will be a bit easier."

They stayed like that, in silence, for a few minutes.

Sounds from the kitchen wafted up to them, Sherlock's rumbling voice and John's snorts at something his brother said.

And then something like a soft exclamation.

And silence.

Gregory tensed and sat up slightly, but never released his hold on Mycroft's waist.

"What are they..."

He turned slightly, pulling the silver-haired head down to his shoulder.

"Probably something in this category" he whispered against the other man's lips. "My little brother finally pulled his head from where it had been stuck for the last five years, or maybe his best friend got tired of waiting... I think I'd rather not know, actually."

"You" his partner - never 'boyfriend', what a disgusting idea - asked softly "you don't want to know something? You are willing to let something that vital just... go?"

"Absolutely."

"We are missing out on a ton of fascinating blackmail material" a strong arm wound around his torso and pulled him closer and under Gregory, making him close his eyes in utter bliss at the feeling of that strong body above him.

"Y-yes" he sighed. "Can we please _not_ talk about my bro..."

"Of course" Gregory's lips pressed to his in a languid, lazy kiss, pulling them closer together in the fashion they have recently discovered worked the best for them, giving Mycroft the maximum of security and allowing Gregory to express his innate caregiver's reflexes. "Come here, My" he whispered, bringing them into a tight embrace. "Just breathe and relax. You can worry later, but now it's just you and me and you can _relax_."

He felt something unwinding inside of him, something that had been pulled tight and painful despite the proper night rest he had had.

Had he known that _DI Lestrade_ was capable of bringing this kind of reaction out of him, he would have given in to the temptation much, much earlier. And maybe the time after John's disappearance would have been easier on all of them, if they were able to sha...

Gregory's hands pressed him in, closer to the wide chest.

"Stop thinking, My" he rumbled and his teeth nipped Mycroft's earlobe, then sucked.

He allowed himself to be held securely and to shut down his mind, just for a moment.

A little reset.

 

#

 

John and Sherlock had eaten breakfast, cleaned up (he suspected John more than his brother) and migrated to the sitting room, where Sherlock had sprawled himself on the big sofa and pulled John on top of him and the soldier was now napping comfortably, covered with a blanket.

"His body temperature is shot to hell" his brother sad softly. "He has bruises and lacerations - mostly he took care of it himself, but he couldn't reach some. The doctor left a prescription for new meds - funnily enough, agreed with John's self-diagnosis and the drug John chose stays the same. Some antibiotics, a ton of supplements... Anthea already brought it in."

"You forgot to say 'thank you', Sherlock" John's voice was sleepy, but steady. "Hello, Mike, Greg."

"John" Gregory sat on the chair closest to their heads and leaned a bit towards them. "Can you tell me - I will record it, so we can have an exact statement as you can give it now, but it's not the official version - what happened yesterday? In your own words, your own time."

"It's..." the soldier sighed and buried his face for a moment in Sherlock's t-shirt.

"You don't have to" the lanky man assured him. "Lestrade can wait until you feel better."

"No, no. It's just, I'd rather do it now, because what if some combination of drugs makes me forget?"

Mycroft shivered slightly. John's voice had a bit of a defeated quality, despite his and Sherlock's obvious change (or rather, rollback) of status.

"What do you mean?"

"The PTSD" John rubbed his eyes. "The meds used sometimes make it easier to suppress some memories. So, please, yes, record it, so we can be sure I get it out when it's fresh."

 

#

 

John had described the situation - coming back with his shopping, walking under the overhanging balcony in the passage, feeling uneasy, dropping the groceries and ducking under the first attack - in details. Mycroft felt just a little bit proud, because the description showed not only the military experience and instincts that even in his addled state John displayed so plainly, but the reasoning and deductive skills John and Sherlock had learnt from _him_. Of course, his little brother took to the concept like a duck to water, and quickly outstripped young John Watson in his ability to take the situation, facts or person apart, but John's approach was, if less effective generally, much more applicable to his planned military career and depending much more on instinctual connections his brain made. Sherlock could divine a man's profession from the way he arranged his pens and the relationship status by the tie and shoelaces. John could watch a person for a few minutes and work out their strengths, weaknesses, possible reactions, likes and dislikes. He could never pinpoint which clue worked for which part of his reasoning, but usually, if he applied himself, the outcome was astounding.

Right now his eye for detail and the manner of describing his surroundings were making an obvious impression on Gregory, who only nodded from time to time and asked simple clarifying questions. He allowed John to take his rest - which consisted of the soldier burying his face in Sherlock's clothes and Sherlock carefully stroking the freshly shaved head - and still they were done before the older two had to leave for their respective offices.

"I will make sure Donovan pays attention to keeping John out of any published documents, at least for the time being. In case someone slips - what kind of security measures can we apply?"

Mycroft re-centered his tie and busied himself with straightening his lover's attire, bringing order into the chaos of Gregory's working tie, cufflinks and tie pin. Sometimes he suspected Gregory arranged all these poorly on purpose, just to have an excuse to bring Mycroft closer, if only for a moment, every morning.

"MI6 has a few locations we could use to sequester the both of them" he murmured, correcting the knot to make it more symmetrical. "Or I could make my parents incandescently happy by saddling them with John for a few weeks. Mummy would pamper him and feed him up in no time."

Gregory grunted in assent.

"He looks properly starved. I suppose he is mostly bone and muscle now, but..."

"He has lost too much weight" Mycroft agreed, quickly considering the options and, accidentally, basking in the blessed, calm warmth of Gregory's body. "I will check the reports first and we'll make the decision depending on the findings. I will let you know during the day if anything changes significantly."

Gregory's lips ghosted over his in a chaste caress.

"Lunch?"

He shook his head.

"I'm afraid not today, love."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. I'm adding a tag "Mycroft just needs a hug", I suppose ;)


	4. Violet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now for a quick ride into the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dear, lovely readers. A fair warning.  
> I detest "POV" markings (other than in chapter titles, as I think if great authors can do it like that, so can I) and I positively hate "FLASHBACK" marks.  
> So there will be none. My aim is to write the text in such a way that everyone will see when it happened. If you can't then it means I'm not doing my job well enough. Point it out, if there is something unclear. I will make it up to you in next chapters.

"Mummy, professor Sterling asked me to tutor one of the younger boys."

She glanced at Mycroft, hearing that morose pronouncement, and her older son was frowning at his toast with such worrythat she lowered the newspaper and looked at him questioningly.

"And?" she asked finally, seeing that he seemed to be unable to vocalise what kind of an issue might have been plaguing him.

"I don't know how to do it" he admitted finally, and the blush flooding his cheeks made his freckles disappear.

"Oh, Mycroft" she smiled and leaned to pat his hand. "Just... Try not to be too hard on him. If he needs a tutor, it means there is some problem, so he will need some... special attention."

"That's not really it" he stabbed a piece of toast with his fork. "But I can barely communicate with others in my class, and as this boy is three years younger, then even if he has no real issues..."

"Mike, this toast is already quite _dead_ , darling. You can stop trying to murder it."

"Murder?" William looked up from where he was reading something under the table. And, most probably, feeding the dog pieces of his ham.

"Billy, go wash your hands now, come back and eat the rest of your breakfast by yourself."

William was steadily watching Mycroft and ignoring her order - handing Redbeard another piece of meat.

" _Sherlock_ , go wash your hands now, come back and eat the rest of your breakfast by yourself."

He hopped off his chair and smiled, throwing back the curls.

"Yes, Mummy."

He could be such a sweet, sweet child.

When he wanted.

"So, when do you start, Mike?"

Her older son grimaced with distaste.

"Mummy, I asked you..."

"When do you start, Mycroft?"

Why, oh why, did she have to bring up _two_ kids like that? They were brilliant, undoubtedly. And they had so much potential for _good_. They were also quite hard-headed.

"Today, Mummy" he sighed. "His cast comes off today morning, so he will be able to write, hopefully. It is all very stupid - he could have been getting tutoring already, once they had released him from the hospital. This way he is much further behind his classmates..." he frowned at the thoroughly stabbed toast and sighed.

"Take his textbook then - what exactly do you need to tutor him in? - and check from the beginning of the year, for each chapter, what he can tell you about the topic in his own words. When you find the point where he starts to get confused, see if there are examples that you can work through with him."

"Maths, chemistry and physics" Mycroft bit into his toast. "His sister is helping him with literature and history, but her grades aren't stellar, so professor Sterling wants to make sure John doesn't suffer any setbacks. The kid is supposedly rather... smart."

She nodded and watched as he devoured the rest of his toast and drank the tea.

"Go brush your teeth and send your brother downstairs to finish eating. I'm sure he is trying to flood the bathroom right now, or something equally crazy. And check his backpack, I beg you, yesterday he managed to smuggle out a dead mouse in one of the pockets!"

The expression of distaste on Mycroft's face was quite plain, but she had to be firm. Being an older brother was not all sunshine and roses. Sometimes you needed to get rid of a dead mouse, too.

 

#

 

William was already home, done with his homework, done with his violin practice, done with digging up worms in the backyard and quite done with being bored, bored, _bored_ at the top of his lungs by the time Mycroft arrived. Before she could even ask her eldest what took him so long, his brother was already on him, flooding him with incessant questions, poking at a suspicious little paper bag in his pocket and in general being a pest.

She peeled her youngest off her eldest.

"Hello, Mycie. How did it go?"

Her son shook his head minutely.

"He is a nice boy, Mummy. But..." he trailed off, frowning. "I'm not sure I will do. He thinks so _differently_."

"It will be a good exercise for you, then" she patted his shoulder consolingly. "Your brother and you have a very similar way of learning and reasoning, so if that..."

"John."

"John, is so different, you will have to learn to use some new brain muscles, darling."

"Brain doesn't have muscles" William looked at her in distaste. "How can you say such silly things?"

"Imaginary muscles, Billy" she pulled one of his curls. "When you have to do something with your brain that you have never done before, it's like exercising an unused muscle. John, the boy Mycie is tutoring, had not been using his hand because of the cast he had been wearing, so he will have to exercise it a lot now. Mycie, however, will have to exercise his brain, just a bit, to adjust to the way John works."

"Why can't John ad-adjust? This is stupid. Mycroft is smarter than him."

His brother snorted and patted his head.

"Not everyone can adjust, Sherlock. I will try to. This will mean I actually _am_ the smarter one."

William's mouth fell open.

"You... you..."

"Don't worry, little brother. You will catch up."

She shook her head and pulled William off his brother's leg.

"Let Mycie breathe, Billy. Go out with Redbeard for his evening run."

He stood perfectly still, watching her expectantly.

Damn her family for having stupid traditions.

"Sherlock, go and let Redbeard out. And don't pester your brother."

He took off at a run and she could finally have a proper look at Mycroft.

"How is the poor boy?"

"Annoyed" he shrugged. "No wonder. He broke his left hand - his dominant one - and for the last seven weeks everyone was trying to make him write with his right, treating him being in a cast as a great occasion and a perfect chance to 'convert' him to righthandedness. Of course, after seven weeks he is rather fed up and still very much lefthanded. I suppose this is why they didn't assign a tutor to him before - they were counting on him coming over to this side of handedness to the last minute."

"I don't really understand people who try to force their kids..." she sighed. "The only downside of writing with your left hand is that you risk smearing ink. Otherwise, I don't see a problem."

"There is some special type of mind needed to be a school official" he suggested. "Because it wasn't only his parents, it was _everyone_. I hope they let him be after that, because, Mummy" he chewed his lip a bit. "He is quite bright, I think. I suppose."

Mycroft picked up his bag and slowly made his way upstairs.

"What kind of progress did you make today?"

"Just checking where he got stuck. Seems he can do a lot on his own, but needs explanation on more advanced points, from time to time. I will sit with him as he does the problems under each chapter and if he gets stuck, we'll work them out together."

"It seems like a fine idea. Just remember to keep the explanations on his level - don't jump ahead too much, even if you think it will help him in the long run. He will learn better if you go in correct order."

Mycroft sighed and nodded in assent.

"And if I digress too much, we will never get him caught up with his class, will we?" he shrugged. "Oh, Mummy. This. John brought them and really wanted me to take them, but..." he swallowed and handed her the sticky paper bag. "They are a bit _too_ good. Put them away somewhere, please."

The bag contained several well mashed together pieces of fudge.

_Oh, my poor darling._

"Have you been tempted by _fudge_ , Mycie?"

"Mummy..." he groaned. "Just... just try it."

She did.

_Oh._

_Well._

"And this is a product of...?"

"His own" Mycroft shivered. "He said his Mum wasn't very keen on baking, but he learnt to make sweets from sweetened milk and this... this is the outcome."

"It's very nice of him to share then."

Mycroft rolled his eyes, just a bit.

"Yeah. Just, put them somewhere I won't find them, please."

 

#

 

"Mummy?"

She glanced over her glasses at Mycroft, standing in the door of her study.

"Something wrong? I thought you had your tutoring..."

_Ah._

There was someone else behind him.

A boy, obviously younger. Holding his left hand protectively to his body. Wheat blonde hair, tan, despite it being late November, a slightly oversized jumper. A bag of books.

"Hello" she said, raising from her desk. "I'm Mycroft's mother, Violet. And you must be John."

He shook the proffered hand and bowed quite smartly.

"John Watson, ma'am" he said and suddenly she found herself watched warily by a pair of very round very blue eyes. "I'm... I just... Mike said we could..."

"We needed a few books that the library doesn't have anymore" Mycroft explained quickly. "I have them in my room and thought I could lend them to John, considering I've passed the exams they were needed for. Would that be..."

"Oh, definitely" she assured them quickly. "Just make sure John doesn't try to carry his own weight in books back home. This bag looks quite full as it is!"

John tugged his book bag slightly closer, looking up at her, eyes like cornflowers watching her in surprise.

"Don't worry, Mummy" Mycroft smiled slightly. "It's just the anatomy reference and the chemistry problems booklet. We need more examples for the chapter we've just finished."

 

#

 

The boy was quiet and unassuming. He watched with round eyes as William pranced from one end of the room to the other, explaining something he had just discovered in his excited, overenergised manner.

"John, chemistry" Mycroft tapped the sheet in front of them. "Sherlock, please stop babbling. We're trying to _focus_."

"If you were smart enough, you would be able to focus even with me dancing on the table in front of you" William snorted. "Which means either you or your..." he shot the blonde boy a glance "... _John_ are not intelligent enough..."

"That's _enough_ from you, young man" she steered him out of the sitting room, leaving John and Mycroft bent over their work. "Now, _Billy_. Stop bothering your brother and his guest. They are working on a rather difficult chapter and John needs to pass the test on this in two days. Mycroft is sure they can manage, but _only_ if John has enough quiet time to do all the examples."

"This is silly" the curls threatening to fall never actually obscured her younger son's pale eyes. "Why does he have to do all the examples? One example should be enough to understand the principle and then he should be able to do it on the test!"

"Billy, please, quiet. Not everyone works the same way. John has a different method of learning and you have a different one."

"His method _sucks_ " he mumbled rebelliously.

"William Sherlock Scott Holmes!" she stood up, propping her hands on her hips. "What was _that_? Should I wash your mouth with soap?!"

He made a gagging noise.

"You won't, or I will throw up" he threatened. "And his method is... bad. Why is he using a method that is worse than what I do?"

She felt very tempted to bite something. Her darling sweet boy.

"Because that is how his brain works. Yours is different from mine and from Mycie's, and John's is his own. Each works in its own special way. And the way you learn is not the same as I used when I was younger and it's not the same as what John uses."

"Why?"

_And here I thought we've left that stage behind us._

"Because if all brains worked the same, everyone would be the same, and that would be awful."

"Ah."

He looked at the sitting room door speculatively.

"No, darling, Enough. Leave them be."

_Because Mycie needs to have someone outside the family. He is developing social skills, after a fashion. John may be a bit quiet, but Mycroft is definitely_ _**trying** _ _. There was a tea made and biscuits on a platter, and John had been sat at the table downstairs, instead of being sequestered with Mycroft upstairs, despite the fact that Mycroft's door has a lock and in the sitting room they are pestered by Billy._

She could only approve of her older son's attempt at socialising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so. Mummy Holmes in the show... I'm just not so sure about her.  
> So my Violet is a bit, maybe, I don't know, sharper.  
> I hope she fits, anyway.


	5. Sally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sally has a bad morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm quite certain that what they are doing is very illegal.

The morning at the office was already promising to suck in several different ways.

The coffee machine broke (not that the coffee had ever been very good).

The forensics had managed to mess up the evidence from the last case.

And now the boss was asking for her. Loudly.

Sally felt a migraine coming, in addition to the aches she still felt, lingering, after the way the homeless buy managed to knock her on her ass.

Yep, and there was _that_.

The squad room was, as one man, very much _not_ watching her hobble in that morning, her muscles pulled and her knee pulsing slightly with overuse.

Also, the boss looked as if someone had combed his hair with a rake.

Sally blinked and, just of a moment, forgot all her woes.

Boss looked as if someone had grabbed his head in both hands and mussed his carefully done hair quite thoroughly.

In the act of snogging him in a rather energetic manner. Which was further attested by his swollen mouth.

And a _reddened cheek_.

Which was a symptom Sally knew quite well from her own personal experience - of dating blokes.

"Donovan, my office. We need to talk."

_Snogged, but probably not shagged then. Sounds rather tense._

She squared her shoulders and closed the door behind her.

"Boss, I..."

"Latte" he pushed a cup towards her.

"I... what?"

"Latte. The coffee machine is on a strike, right? And you didn't manage to get any on your way, because there is no cafe between your place and the office. And you take latte, no frill, no sirups, no fancy flavours, full milk, no sugar."

"Ah..." she picked up the nondescript cup, slightly wary, and took a sip.

_Great God. If he tells me where he got it, I'm willing to get up half an hour early just to drive there...!_

"Now that you've brought balance to your system, I need you to do some stuff for me. Was the evidence from yesterday tagged, described and submitted?"

She groaned.

"Forensics managed to fuck up labelling, somehow. Nothing was recorded yet."

He looked _relieved_.

"Very well" his whole demeanour changed, "Thank God. Now, was there a bag of meds somewhere? Probably a normal shopping bag, or just boxes, if the bag broke."

She sipped her latte.

"Yes, there were some, I think. Someone stepped in them, I'm afraid, in the crowd."

The boss nodded and swallowed a healthy swig of his own coffee (flat white, double, additional espresso).

"And was there a prescription pad found?"

"Yeah, probably one of the local junkies swiped it from the rightful owner. Useless for them, but hey, these guys will steal anything that isn't nailed down."

The boss snorted, just a bit.

"Actually, the owner lost it in the chaos. Very much a qualified doctor, all documents correct. The thing is, Sally..." he inhaled with a slight hiss. "I have to remove some items from the evidence. The pad, for one."

She froze.

"Wh... boss...?"

"The owner is..." he seemed to meditate for a moment. "Sally, do you want me to tell you a nice fairy tale or are you a grownup and want the real story?"

She frowned, watching him, but the normally warm, brown eyes were suspiciously tense.

"Boss?"

"Choose, Sally. Neither will be full truth, but one of them will give you answers. The other one will give you plausible deniability."

"I'm a big girl, boss" she said softly. "What the fuck is going on?"

 

#

 

Military conspiracy.

Experiments on war veterans.

A document from civilian doctor, confirming the soldier's words.

Freak's childhood friend.

Freak having _a friend_.

The boss rolled his eyes a few times as she expressed her surprise.

"So it is possible they are looking for that bloke?"

"Yep. He risked a lot, using his own prescriptions, but he saw no other way than to medicate himself in order to straighten what they messed up. Fortunately they didn't think of checking the NHS database, or they would have found him long ago."

"And you believe him?"

He tapped the doctor's testimony regarding the soldier's injuries and illnesses.

"He is undernourished, his blood sugar is all over the place, his system was repeatedly flooded with unknown psychotropic drugs - he said he guessed some by their effects - he is dehydrated and feverish. Also, he hadn't slept for more than two hours in one piece for the last three months or so. The very fact that he listened to Sherlock was a miracle. The meds he calculated for himself help a lot - he is vertical, speaking and not frothing at the mouth, but this was the first night he had slept in a safe house since he escaped that institution."

"OK, I will... It pains me to say it, but I will go downstairs and help you pick up the meds. But, if it fails, I'll blame you."

"I'll just tell them that one of the officers on scene was doing shopping and dropped these. And he doesn't want this to come on record, because his flatmate needs these and the guy is kind of a public persona."

She looked at him searchingly for a moment.

"You... Oh, that's good. And what about the pad?"

"Sherlock's childhood friend memento. I'll tell them to destroy it, just to spite him."

"W-what..." she was honestly flabbergasted.

"Easy. If someone thinks Sherlock should get reprimanded for this, he can take it. The important part is not to get the name of the owner of the pad published."

She felt an oncoming migraine.

"Ibuprofen" he pushed a vial her way. "And eat something, Sally."

"That won't help my bruised backside" she mumbled, picking out a pill and washing it down with the last of the exquisite coffee. "Where did you get this?" she tapped the cup.

He smiled and drained his cup.

"I have my sources... of good coffee. Now, please, let's go downstairs and see what we can do about making that man invisible again. The meds and the pad. And, also, one last thing..." he reached for his wallet. "John wanted me to give you this."

It was a piece of lined paper, covered with slightly shaky letters.

 

_I'm terribly sorry, Sergeant, but I'm afraid my PTSD is faster than my savoir-vivre._

_Please accept my heartfelt apologies._

_Also, please apply an icepack to that bruise._

 

_In case you wish for a demonstration and an appropriate response training, we can also arrange that._

 

_Sincerely_

 

_JW_

 

"What the fff... heck?"

"The kind man offered you a lesson in asskicking" the boss explained mildly. "Now, the evidence..."

 

#

 

It turned out to be even less arduous than she thought.

Some absolute cretin had, in fact, dumped the prescription pad in a puddle of rather dirty water, rending it barely recognisable and definitely unreadable under the best conditions. It had been discarded as too damaged to find the owner and not relevant to the crime in question. The meds were slightly harder, but considering that "John" had been carrying also a normal bag of groceries and a very old nokia (with a prepaid, unregistered card in it), they easily redirected the forensics team to these.

"Really, to jump a bloke for a bag of vegetables and a mobile that is probably of age by now" she snorted and the tech nodded in agreement.

"And he got more than he was looking for. I've heard that homeless was some kind of bloody ninja!"

Sally grunted.

"If he was, it would be much better for my ego. I'm still not sure what he did, but for such a scrawny guy he was bloody quick."

"It's like these small Japanese fighters. Look like nothing and then bllllrrrp and the enemy is down, crying."

"At least I didn't cry" she grunted, looking aside as boss explained the whole thing about medicines lost by 'one of the officers' and was shown sad remains of several boxes of pills.

"Shit" the DI said with honest feeling. "There goes a quarter of someone's salary. Well, nothing we can do. Anything salvageable there?"

The tech fished out three unbroken leaves of meds and some slightly mauled pieces that still showed pills in their little pockets, backing foil intact.

"Less than a half" she said sorrowfully. "But it's better than nothing. Will you give it to the officer? I wouldn't know who is who, wouldn't want to embarrass them."

"Absolutely" boss smiled winningly and collected the whole thing in a plastic bag. "I'll give him the whole lot, he will be able to show to the doctor what happened, so he gets a new prescription."

"Doctors are rather nervous about overprescribing stuff like that" a girl from across the room added. "Better take the whole thing, right. Don't want someone to go without. Life is hard as it is, and without the right meds to balance the brain going weird..."

The boss approved heartily and they all chatted for a moment about the blessing of modern pharmacology. Fortunately the techs had to get back to work, so they escaped upstairs and ensconced themselves again in the office.

"That was surprisingly easy" she said, shaking her head. "I mean, you could have gone there yourself..."

"I would have told you at some point anyway, Sal" he sat heavily in his chair and waved her to take a seat, too. "If this thing is confirmed and John really was kept in an off the books facility, then we may have a huge mess on our hands. And I don't mean us as police, I mean us as homicide."

She tried to wrap her head around the idea of a secret testing facility that would use military veterans as their test subjects. Why would they...

"You think they will start getting rid of evidence" she stated finally. "And that evidence being the patients..."

"I'm afraid so. We'll have to screen all dead junkies that come our way for the next few months. And, additionally, they will be looking for John himself. I really hope he won't become a target, because he is a pretty decent guy, as far as I could tell when he was awake enough to talk. And he can probably tell us a lot about that facility, once his bronchitis clears and he stops falling asleep at a drop of a hat."

"I hope all they tested on him were the mood drugs" she remarked absently. "They could have been testing anything, including new strains of old viruses. Like, smallpox."

His eyes flew wide open and he was pulling out his mobile.

He waited for a few heartbeats, looking between her and the phone, but finally he sighed and picked a number from his list.

"Good morning to you, too, Mr Holmes."

"M-hm. That's good. How are they doing?"

"I hope they stay indoors."

"As per your suggestion, I've shared the information with my sergeant. She had an idea that I think had merits. John should be checked for potential virus or bacteria... Yes. Please do, if you could. Thank you, Mr Holmes."

He thumbed the disconnect button and sat there for a moment, head down. He looked much more tired than he had when he came in, his eyes half-closing with every deeper breath.

"They will take his blood for testing. Good thing John is a doctor, he will probably have more ideas. Good thinking there, Sally. Even if nothing shows in his blood, at least it's relief and not a nasty surprise in a few weeks."

She smiled tentatively and watched him chew on some idea.

"Holmes - John is now staying in one of his safehouses, under surveillance - told me to share this with one person in the department I trust. I trust you, Sally. I know that you've never seen eye to eye with Sherlock and we all know he is an annoying git on his best day, but this... this is so fucked up I'm not sure what to do about it. Do you remember that case, seven months ago or so, with the two teenagers dead at the school?"

There was a case like that, indeed. She remembered it quite well, unfortunately, because the place of the crime was the same own old chemistry lab in which she had spent innumerable hours trying to master the idea of measuring the water acidity with various reagents.

"Yeah" she confirmed, pressing her hands together to relieve the tension brought on by the old memories.

"And you remember we asked Sherlock to come...?"

"Yeah. He told you to stop nagging him with idiotic requests and texted the name of some acid."

"Which turned out to be the cause of death, yes. And then he didn't show up for two weeks after that."

She nodded. Freak might have been a bit absent at the time.

"John had been reported MIA two days before the teens were killed."

A pause.

"Shit, boss."

"Exactly that, Sally. Exactly that."


	6. Billy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy - or rather, Sherlock - makes observations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still a bit surprised with the reactions I'm getting to this story, wow :)  
> Thank you for all subscriptions/comments/kudos/bookmarks. It's really heartwarming to see the reactions :)  
> I sometimes post snippets (or ideas, or plot bunnies) on [my tumblr](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/) so if you wish to see quotes from the chapters still in writing, go and check it :) I also answer any messages or questions if you contact me there.

Billy - or rather, Sherlock, because this was what he _chose_ and Mummy should remember such a simple thing - was fascinated.

Mycroft had never brought anyone home before.

It was a novelty for both of them.

Intellectually, they both knew that people visited each other. Mycroft had even been invited to a birthday party or two at his classmates' houses. He was excused from throwing his own party due to being born in the middle of the summer, when nobody was in town, so the Holmes' house had never been exposed to other children than the two brothers.

Sherlock had never been invited to anything and he empathetically _didn't care_. Because if he cared, it would hurt, so he preferred not to care. Not to carry his feelings on his face like an encouragement for abuse.

If someone cares, it's easier to find a spot to hit them.

If someone cares, it's easier to really get at them.

He saw it every day at school. Boys cared about their looks, girls, sport results, some cared about grades.

He knew better than that. He used to care about stuff, and he used to share it with people.

His books.

His discoveries.

The way the world was built.

The way machines worked.

The way animals behaved.

His observations.

His dreams.

When he first went to school - because Mummy thought it would be better if he started it earlier than Mycroft did - he shared everything with people. He honestly answered all the teacher's questions - including the one about their future plans, to which he replied that he was going to become a pirate when he grew up. He still remembered the cold feeling that had pierced his heart when the girl next to him grimaced and pushed him away, saying "don't be stupid, pirates don't exist anymore".

When the teacher asked them to describe their best friends, he told everyone about Redbeard and Mycroft.

"You're a weirdo. Your dog is your best friend?"

When everyone was describing their vacations, he told them about watching ants clean a carcass of a dead fish, which was the absolutely most fascinating thing he had ever seen in his then five years of life.

The teacher called his parents.

The kids called him a "freak".

There was a point at which he understood that being open about himself meant that others were going to disdain him.

After yet another book was stolen from him and dumped in the fountain, he stopped bringing any books to school. At least even the bullies were afraid of the librarian, so they never stole the library books from him.

After yet another group project in the class when nobody wanted to be in the group with him, he decided then and there he was going to stop caring. Because caring never helped him and being interested in stuff seemed weird to people. And yet, the resolution never worked perfectly. He usually managed to keep himself in check during the lessons, but, day after day, too much happened at the school and he simply couldn't keep it inside.

Every day when he came back from school, Mycie was there and he allowed Sherlock to cry and blubber all over his shirt, and he held Sherlock and told him, in the tiniest of whispers, that it's better not to involve yourself, not to show your heart, not to let them bite you. _Calme-toi_ , Sherlock. _Calme-toi_. Imagine yourself on an island surrounded by frozen sea. Nobody can touch you, nobody can find you, nobody can hurt you.

Don't give them openings. Don't let them see how special you are. Study, pass tests, finish school. Just do what you must.

And now he was sitting in his room when one floor below _Mycie_ of all people was having a friend over.

The fact that the friend was apparently stupid enough to warrant tutoring didn't change a thing.

He thought Mycroft was his best friend, but now Mycroft was spending time with someone else.

It was _unfair_. But if Mycie was getting a result like that with his island on an icy sea, certainly Sherlock would do even better with his castle surrounded by moats of fire. Wouldn't he?

 

#

 

The boy was quiet.

Sherlock was disappointed because apart from that first day when Mycroft had introduced John to everyone and Sherlock tried to make an impression on the older boys by showing them how well he understood what they were talking about, he hadn't heard him speak up. When he sat in the next room quietly and listened in, he heard Mycroft's exclamations of "very well!" and "yes, exactly what you say" and "that's nicely done". Mycroft _showered_ the boy with praise.

He heard Mycroft explaining some things - and missing the context of what they were talking about was _infuriating_ because he had no idea what the boy's problem was. Physics, he understood physics. Things fell and pushed other things, things went slower or faster. Electrons in the wires ran forward and made things glow or move or heat up.

He understood biology and anatomy because Daddy had bought him the fabulous anatomy atlas and another, showing how animals were put together, with all the muscles, bones and other fascinating pieces.

He wasn't yet sure about chemistry. From what the TV showed (in the limited time he was allowed to spend in front of it when he was sick), there were explosions and exciting fires waiting to happen. From what Mycie said about school, it was putting some liquids into other liquids and making them change colour.

He really hoped that by the time he started chemistry the school would move more towards the blowing up kind of exercises. Who cared if a liquid changed colour.

Sherlock wanted to see stuff bubble, froth and boil.

He also hoped that by the time he started proper Biology, they would move to something more interesting than dissecting a frog. He already knew how to dissect a frog. He wanted to ask the teacher if they knew how to put the frog together again and make it all better.

He wasn't sure about chemistry, but he was quite sure he wanted to know what Mycie and that whole John boy were talking about.

_"So you will be taking up rugby again, despite this unfortunate break?"_

_"M-hm. Middle of next month, I'll be joining the team again."_

Oh, the quiet boy knew how to say a full sentence.

_"And what are your plans after? College?"_

_"Medical school."_

Aaand back to single words. What was _wrong_ with that kid? He looked older than Sherlock - by the textbooks, he was in Year Eight, so more or less between Mycroft and him.

_"That's... ambitious. Are you sure you are up to this? I don't mean to say you can't do it, but..."_

_"I'll manage. I'll apply for financial aid and..."_

_Some whispers._

_"That's... smart."_

_Mycroft sounded actually impressed._

_"My family isn't well off" the boy admitted lightly. "But with the additional help, I will be able to finish in time and then... deployment."_

_"You could stay in one of the hospitals in Britain. Work with the veterans and so on."_

_A moment of silence._

_"That wouldn't be... I mean, these places, people with families need positions in these hospitals. I can leave."_

_"John, that is..."_

Oh. But that meant, if John was planning to join the Army - because he was, if they were talking about deployments and veterans - that Mycie would lose his friend.

On one hand, that would mean Sherlock would again have Mycroft only for himself.

On the other hand...

He sighed.

He pushed the thought down.

No caring. He cared for Mycroft and his stupid _feelings_ and here was John and he was going to leave someday and leave Mycie without friends. And now Sherlock was worried because Mycie sounded worried and that was just all so unfair.

_"I'm not_ _**noble** _ _, Mike. I want to use this... to see places, things. I won't be able to pay all that money myself, but if I go on a deployment, I can see them... you know. Like a side effect."_

OK, so John was _not_ as stupid as he sounded sometimes. Sometimes he sounded actually grown up and serious.

_"I just hope they won't have an issue with me using my left hand."_

_"As long as you march in the right direction, they should be fine."_

And they giggled. That boy made Mycroft Theodore Evan Holmes _giggle_.

He decided to intervene.

"Aren't you two having too much fun for a tutoring session?"

They looked at him, comically frozen mid-sentence, John with his mouth open, Mycroft with his tea mug at his lips.

"What do you want, little brother?"

"I've heard you laughing, so I decided to _investigate_."

"We..." John looked up at Mycroft. In panic?

"We were just wrapping up. This is John's last lesson, actually, he's all caught up with the rest of the class."

"Yeah" the boy said softly. "I just... I wish, I mean, the books..." he made kind of weird gesture towards the heap of books collected at the end of the table. "Thank you, I mean, lending..."

He was talking weird again.

"Well, it's not like I need them in particular, and Sherlock here won't have a use for them for a year or so. If you need to borrow something, you certainly can. Mummy said you aren't supposed to carry too many at the same time, but she never said you can't take something home if you need to read it again."

The boy brightened.

Really, freakishly brightened.

"May I?" he squawked. "I mean, oh, gosh, Mike, thank you. I wanted... this one, the chem book, my own is so old... And this one has all the explanations... may I?"

Mycroft didn't actually roll his eyes, but he pushed the textbook across the table.

"Take it. As long as you return it by the end of the year, it will be fine. And if you need anything else, just give me a call, you know. Professor Sterling ordered me to make sure you don't fall behind and I'm here for you at least until the New Year. He actually planned us to take at least that long, but you managed to do it much sooner than he expected."

"I, well, I did? It's all because of you, Mike, thank you."

"Now, we could leave it as it is, or we could go over the next lessons, to let you prepare a bit earlier, and this way you will have time to deal with the current program of other subjects. I suppose they are still letting you skip P.E, right?"

John sighed heavily.

"Just until the end of the month, but yes."

"So you can use these hours in the school library and catch up with reading for other subjects or do your homework quietly. If you tell me for which periods you are there, I'll check what I'm doing at that time and we could meet, too, and I can help you in case you have some difficulties. This way you maximise the use of the time you spend at school and can get ahead in other subjects when you are here."

Sherlock wasn't sure he wanted John there anymore. Mycroft was spending way too much time with that blonde boy. And who played rugby anyway? It was a nasty, brutal sport, as exemplified by John's broken arm!

"That would be... logical use of my time, yes. Thank you, Mike."

_"Thank you, Mike." You could learn his proper name if you wanted to show gratitude, you stupid boy._

"So we can start with physics. We've started with Energy already because this is what your class is doing right now, but I think we can leave that alone, you're doing well enough. What I suggest we work on would be light and sound."

John frowned and lipped "light and sound" quietly.

"Light is faster than sound" Sherlock provided happily. "That's why first it's a flash and then the sound of thunder."

"Quite correctly. Now, John, I have this book here" Mycroft pulled one from the heap. "It's all about light and speed of light and how mirrors work and prisms and everything. Take it, read the first chapter and then we can talk about it. By the time you start on 'Light' in the class, you will be well-prepared and you will be able to relax a bit."

"I..." the boy pulled the book closer. "Thank you, Mike. I mean, like..."

"Not a problem, John. It will do me good to revise it anyway because Sherlock here will be starting the same next year."

"But I thought he was, like, _ten_..." John frowned again.

"He skipped two years. He is starting Year Eight in September."

"Oh. That's... amazing."

The blue eyes, again, watching him.

John was surprised.

Sherlock smiled.


	7. Sally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the Yard, for some proper police work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I Am So Sorry.  
> Unfortunately my vacation was not as relaxing as I expected, starting with me drowning my laptop (rescued, and I've gained a valuable life skill).  
> Also, some other stories exploded suddenly, so I had to take care of supernumerary plot bunnies (and plot hedgehogs, in one case...!)
> 
> A chapter for all the fans of not-that-dumb Sally.
> 
> Warning: I know next to nothing about the military, so I'm taking a heavy dose of licentia poetica on this part.

It was rather incredible, Sally repeated to herself time and again as she browsed the records available to public. That skinny shortarse that had so efficiently taken over the scene the day before was a bloody Green Beret. Or something in the general vicinity of.

Multiple decorations - some with specific places, actions or even battles describing them, but some with rather generic, non-telling captions from 'bravery in the face of overwhelming odds' (which read "really scary motherfucker who single-handedly shot up a group of enemies") to 'special recognition' (which read "black ops and don't ask too many questions or There Will Be Trouble").

He probably didn't have a little box of medals, like her grandpa did. He had to have an entire chest of these, because looking by the numbers... She tried to imagine him in his full dress uniform, with all the ribbons and pins, the weight of which would have probably toppled him over. She clicked another link, university listing of all students.

...a photo.

_Woohoo. Damn, Freak... You do have good taste._

The boy in the photo - the young man - was not wearing a well-cut, bespoke suit like the ones Sherlock sported on daily basis. Still, the slacks and a very - very very - close fitting shirt made him about as edible as her mother's best vanilla cupcakes. A glint of metal on his chest - the army tags - and the wicked little smile that made her whistle silently - were only an adornment for the muscled arms and what had to be - from that angle it was not absolutely certain, yet she could guess - a very shapely butt.

She closed her eyes, overlying the student from the photo over the image of the wild-haired, wide-eyed man from the crime scene. Cut the hair, remove the wrinkles, add several stone of muscle...

Yeah. No wonder Freak fell for him - because it would be a cold day in hell when she believed Lestrade's story about "best friends from childhood". Best friends didn't caress each others' arms in this way, they didn't lean into the other's embrace in such an intimate way and, frankly, she couldn't imagine Sherlock hand-feeding anyone in the way he had done it with the soldier at the crime scene. The way they looked at each other was more steamy than any snogging she had ever seen.

_Best friend, my ass._

She scrolled through the search results some more.

There were multiple news stories, listing Watson as one of combatants in this or that action, some mentions of his decorations, again and again.

A blog. Listing Watson's name among some others.

She clicked.

 

#

 

The boss looked as if he hadn't eaten since he arrived, but the desk was littered with cups and the mountain of paperwork had been separated and shifted around, so at least something had been achieved.

"Sally?" he looked up, his eyes slightly puffy. "Tell me you have something."

"Something is a good definition. Not sure what it is, but..." she closed the door and brought her laptop to his desk. "There is that girl, you see. A sister of some soldier. She lists Captain Watson's name among other MIA soldiers from that region _but_ she says it's impossible that they are dead. One of these is her brother and she is pretty sure he is alive."

"You know how families think they would have _felt_ their son's death, Sally" he sighed. "We have one of these every week."

"She writes he had called her, once."

Suddenly the sleepy, distracted lion behind the desk sharpened and woke up, as if magically transformed into a much more predatory creature.

"Did she give any details?"

"Just that he called her and that he was incoherent, but very much alive _after_ the army declared him MIA and then informed her they weren't going to actively search for him anymore. And he said he was actually in the country."

"Do we have her details?"

"Not her name or anything, but she did put up an e-mail account here and she asks the families of other soldiers to contact her, should they know anything about their loved ones."

He pursed his lips for a moment.

"We can't just plain go to her and tell her we have one of them in custody. That's obviously a bad idea."

Sally was more than ready for that.

"We can contact her claiming we have something that _belonged_ to one of these. Watson would be obvious - and she will see my search in the stats of her blog anyway, so it doesn't make sense to try with another name. Can you ask the Holmeses - or Watson - to sacrifice something that would be recognisable as his, durable and yet something insignificant... not like his medals, or stuff like that."

He ran a hand through his hair.

"There is one thing that is durable, signed and not _that_ important in daily life - and soldiers have two of them, so if we ask him to lend us one..."

"His dog tags" she relaxed. "Yes. He had them on yesterday."

"You see, perfect solution. We found the tag in the mud, we searched for him, found he is MIA in the army database, googled..."

"Maybe someone stole one from him, or from his things if they were retrieved by the army."

"Doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense" Lestrade pointed out. "Because how could we have found _one_ tag in London when the soldier went MIA in Afghanistan. The stupider we make it, the better. Is this is genuine, the girl won't know the difference."

"And if it's a trap, they will think we're idiots."

"Sherlock says we are anyway, so why not make use of it and play dumb coppers on purpose for once" he snickered. "Very well. I will call Sherlock and ask if Watson could lend us one of his tags - we'll have to dirty it a bit, too - and you prepare the e-mail. Just don't send it until I have confirmation that Watson wants to lend it to us..."

 

#

 

Watson didn't _want_ to lend them the tag, but he relented, saying that he was quite ready to provide anything that may lead to apprehending the people who had held him. Also, once he acquainted himself with the list of other soldiers presented in the blog post, he confirmed having recognised or at least tentatively identified three of them as also having been kept in the hospital.

The Freak had delivered the tag, already thoughtfully smeared with mud.

"What is your plan?" he asked, looking a bit to the side from her, tilting slightly to the left.

"There is someone running a blog about soldiers who had gone MIA, claiming to be a sister of one of them. We want to contact the owner and suss out their actual intentions. If the girl is genuine, we may use whatever she had found out and follow up. If it's a setup, telling them we've found Watson's tag will confuse them and maybe produce some interesting reaction. Either way, we'll learn something."

"I'm coming with you" he said curtly, tightening his hold on the tag, instead of handing it over.

"No, you are not" she heard the boss right behind her. "This is not a typical case on which we would ask you to accompany us and if you do, it will draw more attention to it. And more attention is _not_ what we wish to draw, correct?"

And Sally witnessed a miracle.

She saw Sherlock Holmes bite his tongue, inhale deeply and Shut Up.

 

#

 

The girl seemed quite genuine, actually. She agreed to a meeting readily, setting the time for six in the afternoon, as she had to get home from the bank where she worked.

When Sally knocked, the door opened immediately, betraying that her host had been waiting in the hall for her already. Jitters produced by the too-long wait were obvious even to an untrained eye.

"W-what did you mean, you've found one of them?" the question was like a shot from a gun, exploding in the confines of the small corridor. "You..."

"Actually, what we found is more of a trace" Sally tapped her pocket. "One of his tags."

They sat down at the dinner table and Sally put the evidence bag (sealed) between them.

"B-but..." the girl stammered. "How...?"

"Well, that's what we wanted to know" Sally smiled at her and nodded towards the bag. "If we have a soldier who has been MIA for several months and then we find a tag that belongs to him in the middle of London - just a single one, mind you - then even the best of London police may feel a little confused. My boss certainly does. He would never allow himself to show this in front of me" Sally theatrically rolled her eyes "but he is as stumped as everyone else. We even don't know which department to refer this to, but for the time being we are assuming simple theft."

The girl - Lilianna - frowned.

"Who would steal it? And how, when?"

Sally inhaled, considered the question and went with her instincts.

"You see..." she bit her lip for a moment. "I have a theory. I didn't share it with my boss, because he would be horrified, but..." Sally was mentally giving herself an Academy Award for Supporting Role. "I think that this Watson bloke may be dead. And that someone from the army had found him, took that tag and came home with it, but never reported having found him... And then _that_ person in turn somehow lost that tag - and I know that area, it is rather dangerous. I don't know what to think about it all, but it seems like the most probable explanation!"

Lilianna covered her mouth with her hand.

"How... I mean, I know, but... Nothing is making any sense! If someone found him, why not give his family that little comfort... And..." she looked at Sally, eyes fearful and big "would that mean Ronald is dead, too?"

Sally sighed.

"I wouldn't say so, until we find actual trace of him. My theory only comes from the fact that Watson's tag was found _alone_. Single one. Just like is normally taken off a - sorry to say that - corpse. When they can't transport the body back. They leave one tag on the body for identification and take the second one back home."

The girl twitched and grimaced, looking away from Sally.

"Sounds rather ugly" she said finally. "I mean, if someone did find Watson's body and took the tag, they should have reported that to their command, right?"

Sally nodded slowly, making a sympathetic sound.

"But if they didn't, that means they had some... some kind of bad plans...? Or maybe they didn't get the chance, because someone got rid of _them_ in turn?"

 

#

 

"That girl is either a genuine article or a future movie star. She was so seriously invested in my story I started to be afraid she might start a campaign to search for Watson all over the town immediately. I managed to calm her down and assured we will be on a lookout for anything related to her brother, too."

Sally slumped on the chair and accepted another cup of coffee gratefully. She sniffed it suspiciously, but yet again, it seemed to be of a much better quality than what the cafeteria could offer. She actually considered pressing her boss for details of the place of origin of the beverage, but that would mean risking what she had now... Nah. Now worth it.

"So the girl seems legit. Fine. That means one of Watson's co-abductees had managed to get free long enough to call her, somehow. Do you have his details? We could show a photo of him to Watson, see if he recognises the fellow..."

She waved a plastic baggie with the photo triumphantly under his nose.

"I may look like a Bear of a Very Little Brain compared to Holmes, but I _have_ been promoted on my own merits. I asked her for the latest photo she had and made a few copies, just in case we need to hand it to others. You can take this and check with Watson. If he confirms that the guy was there, we'll have a link. Meanwhile, she gave me the time when the supposed phone conversation happened and I've put the geeks on this."

Boss snatched the plastic from her hand.

"And if he says the bloke was _not_ there, it will also be quite interesting, won't it?"

**Author's Note:**

> Note (2019-05-11): this will be continued, I just got a little stuck. The timeline is undergoing revision and I'm checking the already posted parts for consistency, because I might have written myself into a plothole in one place. Once it's done and I post a new chapter, I will detail which parts underwent a significant change.


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